Bullet proof
Bond villain Blofeld sums up 007 as follows: “You satisfy your brutish instincts with alcohol, nicotine and sex while waiting to be dispatched on the next misbegotten foray.” We know better. But what does James Bond drink, exactly? Joanne Gibson investigates.
It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst,” says Commander James Bond in Thunderball, the novel by Ian Fleming published in 1961, when Miss Moneypenny asks, “Do you really drink and smoke as much as that?” A physical has just revealed that 007’s “average daily consumption of alcohol is in the region of half a bottle of spirits of between 60 and 70 proof”. Meanwhile, we have already learnt – in Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, published in 1953 – that Bond smoked 70 cigarettes a day. Not to mention the time he adds the amphetamine Benzedrine to a glass of 1946 Dom Pérignon (Moonraker, 1955), or his bedtime cocktail of four double vodkas and tonics followed by half a grain of the barbiturate Seconal (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1963).
Suffice to say that Bond is not as conservative a Smirnoff and Bollinger man as most of the movies would have us believe. The literary 007 drinks everything from Red Stripe beer to the Serbian brandy slivovic (317 drinks in all, according to www.atomicmartinis.com/007, the mind-boggling website from which all figures in this article are taken). If anything he’s actually a whisky man, consuming no fewer than 58 bourbons and 38 scotches (not counting all the doubles), compared to a mere 19 vodka martinis. And who would have thought that his second-favourite tipple is the Japanese rice wine sake? (Admittedly only due to the vast amounts he drinks in the 1964 book You Only Live Twice…)
Even the silver-screen 007 knocks back everything from ouzo to the Turkish spirit raki (114 drinks in total). But certain drinks – thanks at least in part to lucrative sponsorship deals – have gradually become an integral part of his image. This makes things easier for those who aspire to the Bond lifestyle of impossible cool – after all, we can’t all shoot a Walther PPK or drive an Aston Martin, but we can certainly walk into a bar and order a vodka martini, shaken not stirred. However, it also means a lot has been forgotten, from the Champagne Bond drinks (no, not just Bollinger but also Dom Pérignon, “ordinary” Moët, Taittinger, Krug, Veuve Clicquot and even a pint of pink Pommery served in a silver tankard!) to still wines ranging from First Growth Bordeaux to rosé and retsina…
CHAMPAGNE AND CAVIAR
Though now almost synonymous with Bond, Bollinger only makes its film debut (“slightly chilled, two glasses, thank you”) in Live and Let Die (1973) – a full 11 years after Bond first grabbed a bottle of Dom Pérignon, the top label of Moët & Chandon and arguably the world’s most prestigious Champagne, to use as a weapon in Dr No (1962).
“That’s a Dom Pérignon ’55. It would be a pity to break it,” observes the steel-clawed Dr No. “I prefer the ’53 myself,” is Bond’s reply – and, indeed, he returns to “this passion juice” in Goldfinger (1964) when he tells Jill Masterson that drinking Dom Pérignon ’53 above the temperature of 38ºF is “as bad as listening to The Beatles without ear muffs”. However, in Thunderball (1965) he pairs the ’55 he’d previously undermined with some Beluga caviar. Both are considered excellent vintages, as is the ’59 he enjoys in You Only Live Twice (1967).
But he shows a slight lapse of judgement in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) when he woos La Comtesse Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo with the lesser 1957 vintage (the future and tragically short-lived Mrs Bond arguably putting two bottles to better use as weapons).
When Bond lands on triple-nippled Scaramanga’s beach in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), pint-sized henchman Nick Nack greets him with a bottle of “Dom Pérignon soixante-quatre” and a single glass on a tray. “I prefer the ’62 myself,” replies Bond (though, as with the ’53 and ’55, both vintages are considered excellent), whereupon Scaramanga pops the cork, completely dousing Nick Nack (at which point 007 must surely lose some respect for the world’s most deadly assassin). In contrast, Bond says he possibly misjudged web-fingered Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), since “any man who drinks Dom Pérignon ’52 can’t be all bad”.
Although only two movies feature Taittinger – From Russia with Love (1963), where assassin Red Grant uses it to slip chloral hydrate to KGB agent Tatiana Romanova, and the 1967 spoof Casino Royale (which doesn’t really count) – this was in fact the literary Bond’s first Champagne love. In Casino Royale, he explains the intricacies of baccarat to double agent Vesper Lynd over a Taittinger Blanc de Blanc 1943 (“probably the finest Champagne in the world”), and in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service we learn that it is his “trademark drink” when in the fictional French gambling resort of Royale-les-Eaux.
In the short story 007 in New York (1963), Fleming even includes a footnoted recipe for “Scrambled Eggs James Bond” to accompany pink Taittinger (see recipe pg.58). But in Moonraker, 007 dismisses Taittinger as having been a “fad” whereupon M introduces him to Dom Pérignon – the irony being that Dom P is forever cast aside in the movie Moonraker (1979), when Bond tells Holly Goodhead: “Bollinger? If it’s ’69, you were expecting me.” At the end, of course, even Jaws gets to crack a bottle – with his teeth.
Founded in 1829, Bollinger is one of a few remaining Grande Marque houses still owned and managed by its founding family. Over lunch at the Eiffel Tower in A View to a Kill (1985), Bond correctly identifies the Champagne in his flute as Bollinger ’75. “I see you are a connoisseur, Mr Bond,” remarks French detective Achille Aubergine. In the same film, 007 replaces the “questionable” Champagne chosen for apparent Soviet defector General Georgi Kosov with some Bollinger RD (which is Grande Année or great vintage Bollinger that has been aged on its lees for at least eight years and “recently disgorged” to guarantee freshness despite its venerable age). “The best,” comments an appreciative Kosov – and Bond apparently agrees, given that he orders a whole case of RD for his hotel room in Licence to Kill (1989). And has there ever been more blatant, yet effective, product placement than the chilled bottle of Bollinger Grande Année 1988 stored in the armrest of Bond’s Aston Martin in Goldeneye (1995)?”
The Bond-Bollinger relationship continues to this day, making it the longest-running brand marketing partnership in film-making history. As Societé Jacques Bollinger MD Etienne Bizot commented at the launch of Casino Royale in 2006: “Movie audiences make the connection between a character they admire and the drink he enjoys. This kind of high-impact exposure will help us to continue to expand awareness, sales and distribution worldwide.”
WINE AND ROSÉS
When it comes to still wine, it’s in the novels and short stories that Bond comes into his own – despite a slow start in Live and let Die (1954), where Bond and CIA agent Felix Leiter have “as good a Liebfraumilch as you can get in America” over lunch in Manhattan. In From Russia with Love (1957), Bond drinks a half-bottle of Calvet (Bordeaux), shares a bottle of Kavaklidere (a “rich, coarse Burgundy like any other Balkan wine”) and a bottle of Broglio (Chianti Classico). In Goldfinger (1959), Bond congratulates his host on the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen (describing the Mosel Riesling as “nectar”) then enjoys a “delicious” Mouton Rothschild 1947 with roast duckling.
He also has the Loire wine Rosé d’Anjou with sole meunière, daydreams about ice-cold Vouvray (also Loire), tucks into sausages and a half-litre of Mâcon (from the largest white wine area in Burgundy), and knocks back a carafe of the dry white Swiss wine Fondant.
In Thunderball (1961), Bond is ordered to spend two weeks drying out at a health clinic where he develops a “passionate longing for a large dish of Spaghetti Bolognese… accompanied by a whole bottle of the cheapest, rawest Chianti (bulk for his empty stomach and sharp tastes for his starved palate)”. And after nine (yes, nine) pints of sake in You Only Live Twice (1967), Bond takes up Australian contact Richard “Dikko” Henderson’s suggestion of a dinner of eels and “a serious bottle of plonk”, volunteering to pay for the eels if Henderson pays for the “plonk, whatever that is”. Clearly more accustomed to drinking the good stuff , he can barely stomach M’s favourite tipple, an Algerian wine called Infuriator (“Got real guts to it,” says M. “Drink up, James! Drink up!”). Far more “stimulating” is a half-bottle of Mouton Rothschild 1953 enjoyed with roast partridge…
In Colonel Sun (1968), the first Bond novel written after Fleming’s death, 007 lunches on cold beef and potato salad accompanied by a well-chilled bottle of Anjou rosé – a choice for which Kingsley Amis, writing as Robert Markham, was heavily criticised. “I don’t like it either, but Bond did,” insisted Amis in a 1981 letter, referring to the well-iced pint enjoyed by 007 in Goldfinger. “Admittedly with a sole meunière, but if rosé goes with anything it goes with anything, right?”
In the movies, the quite extraordinary depth of Bond’s wine knowledge is only displayed in For Your Eyes Only (1981), when he dines with double agent Aristotle Kristatos on Corfu. “May I suggest a white Robola wine from Kefalonía, my homeplace?” asks Kristatos. “Well, if you’ll forgive me, I find that a little too scented for my palate” replies Bond. “I prefer the [local] Theotaki Aspro.” Typically, though, the silver-screen 007’s wine preference is for exceptional vintages of top (mostly Right Bank) Bordeaux, from Mouton Rothschild ’34 in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974, the year after the château’s reclassification as a First Growth) to Lafite Rothschild ’59 in A View to a Kill (1985). But Bond takes a left turn in Casino Royale (2006), sharing a bottle of Château Angélus 1982, much to the delight of Hubert de Boüard de Laforest, co-owner of the St-Émilion premier grand cru classé (and, incidentally, of Stellenbosch property Anwilka). “It will be seen by hundreds of millions of people and it gives Angélus a world image,” he told UK wine magazine Decanter.
Mostly, of course, Bond’s wine knowledge is simply used to see through a disguise or foil a dastardly plot. In Diamonds are Forever (1971), for example, Bond realises that the waiters who have brought a slap-up dinner to his suite, complete with “bombe surprise” and reeking of aftershave, are none other than Messrs Wint and Kidd, the henchmen of his arch-enemy, Blofeld. When they serve the wine – a Mouton Rothschild ’55 – Bond tricks them by saying: “The wine is quite excellent. Although, for such a grand meal I had rather expected a claret.” Wint responds that the cellars are rather poorly stocked with clarets, to which Bond replies: “Mouton Rothschild is a claret. And I’ve smelled that aftershave before and both times I’ve smelled a rat!”
While aboard the Orient Express in From Russia with Love (1963), 007 drinks Taittinger Blanc de Blanc with sole (a good match) but Red Grant orders Chianti. Later, when initially overpowered by Grant, Bond says “Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something.” Grant replies, “You may know the right wines, but you’re the one on your knees.” Not for long, though...
Bond returns to the big screen this month, acted by Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace, and I, for one, am curious to see what he drinks. Certainly Craig’s debut in Casino Royale was impressive – not only did his Bond set a new single-film record of 12 drinks (the other Bonds only averaged about five per film), but he diversified from the usual vodka martini, shaken not stirred (“do I look like I give a damn?”) and came up with his own invention, the Vesper (see recipe). Things are looking up – or, as Bond might say, bottoms up.
JAMES BOND'S CREATOR:
IAN FLEMING
007 inherited his love of drinking from novelist Ian Fleming, who teasingly referred to his 14 Bond books (including two short-story collections, and two published posthumously) as his “autobiography”. He also wrote two non-fiction books (The Diamond Smugglers and Thrilling Cities), and the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Born in London on 28 May 1908, Fleming studied languages at the Universities of Munich and Geneva. After failing the Foreign Service exam, he turned to journalism, joining news agency Reuters in 1931. While working as a correspondent in the Soviet Union, he had dealings with British Intelligence, which recruited him at the beginning of World War II. By the end he had attained the rank of commander.
According to www.atomicmartinis.com/007, Fleming loved martinis (both gin and vodka) as well as bourbon, pink gins and the rum-based cocktails of Jamaica, where he had his second home, Goldeneye. By 1946, doctors attributed his severe chest pains to the 60-plus cigarettes and bottle of gin he enjoyed every day. He wrote: “I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much.” He died of a heart attack on 12 August 1964.
RECIPE FOR SCRAMBLED
EGGS "JAMES BOND"
(From 007 in New York, short story
published in 1963)
Serves Four
12 fresh eggs
Salt and pepper
150g fresh butter
Freshly chopped chives or fines herbes
Break the eggs into a bowl. Beat thoroughly with a fork and season well. In a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt two-thirds of the butter. Pour in the eggs and cook over a very low heat, whisking continuously with a small egg whisk. While the eggs are still slightly more moist than you would wish for eating, remove pan from heat, add remaining butter and continue whisking for half a minute before adding the finely chopped chives or fines herbes. Serve on hot buttered toast in individual copper dishes (for appearance only) with pink Champagne (Taittinger) and low music.
RECIPE FOR THE VESPER
(From Casino Royale, published in 1953,
screened as a movie in 2006)
Three measures of Gordon’s gin One measure of vodka (preferably a Russian grain vodka) Half a measure of Lillet Blanc (the original Kina Lillet no longer exists) Shake very well until ice-cold. Pour into a deep Champagne goblet, and add a large, thin slice of lemon-peel.
